


it's so much better

by aquaexplicit



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Bickering, Introspection, M/M, Unresolved Sexual Tension, sap, talking about feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-08-21 14:40:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16578446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aquaexplicit/pseuds/aquaexplicit
Summary: We are still kind of a loser, Venom eventually concludes.Eddie smiles, tired but soothed at the conviction of Venom's voice. “Yeah. But we won't leave each other because of it, right?”No. Never.





	it's so much better

**Author's Note:**

> additional tag/warning for domestic violence: this ends with an implication venom is going to eat an abusive boyfriend.

_She doesn't know we're going to get her back._   
  
Eddie tries not to think about it. He hasn't wanted Anne back in any way that isn't fundamentally driven by self pity and despair in weeks. He doesn't know how to articulate his sudden not need to Venom, the same way he doesn't know how to explain it to himself.   
  
Not thinking about his own feelings too hard has worked well-ish through his whole life, though, so he adopts the strategy again. It's fairly effective.   
  
Venom, rambunctious as his hunger and basically good intentions are, is pretty easy to keep distracted, as long as Eddie keeps his own mind clear. His symbiote will freight train focus from their latest article or good samaritan deed if Eddie let's his thoughts wander, but as long as he keeps the organized chaos of his mind anchored in purpose, they're actually fairly productive.   
  
It's funny that Eddie functions happier in society now that he's melded with an alien. The outside pressing his nose to the glass to see in feeling that's always separated him from others should be heavier. The distance should yawn and gnaw wider. It doesn't. He feels closer to humanity, to human, now that he's biting the heads off villains literally as well as metaphorically.   
  
He doesn't hide in his apartment, or in corner booths when he goes out, either. He doesn't only watch people live their lives. He joins them.   
  
Eddie reflects on this when it's overcast. The day is warm even under shadow and he drinks coffee outside a small cafe. He watches people pass, smiles at the ones who make eye contact, telling Venom they can't eat those who don't return his grin.   
  
**They are rude. Rude is bad. We eat bad people. That is the deal.** ****  
  
“Rude isn't always bad,” Eddie explains out loud, because it feels crazier to talk to Venom in his head than to talk to Venom as if the symbiote is sitting right across from him.   
  
Besides, a dude talking to himself isn't anything noteworthy in the neighborhood, really.   
  
“We're rude sometimes, you know.”   
  
**We are not rude!** ****  
  
Eddie tucks a smile into his coffee. Venom’s sensibilities are so easily offended, and it's as entertaining as it is adorable.   
  
**We are not! Adorable!** ****  
  
“You're cute as a button.”   
  
His own amusement flutters in his stomach while Venom’s huffy frustration tendrils in his chest. Maybe feeling two sets of feelings is part of what's amplified Eddie’s connection to the world around him. He feels so much, now, feels it in time with another living thing, and it's less lonely than he's ever been.   
  
**You are adorable.** Venom flips, annoyed, inside of his head. Eddie laughs into it. **Anne is adorable.** ****  
  
At the mention of her name, Eddie gulps. He swallows his coffee around an asphalt lump in his throat, hot and clogging and unsure. He tries to change the subject before Venom can fixate, but Venom narrows its focus on the surge of bittersweet that Anne's name always leaves in his throat.   
  
**We haven't seen her in weeks Eddie.** ****  
****  
“She's busy,” Eddie says quickly, nodding to a woman who just as quickly avoids his gaze.  
  
**With Dan.** ****  
  
“Being happy with Dan.” A guy passes, but he tips his baseball cap towards Eddie, not phased when Eddie adds, “We shouldn't bother her.” Eddie raises his coffee cup in a show of thanks.   
  
Eddie can feel Venom - not frown, exactly. But he does feel the sharp points of Venom’s displeasure skim the back of his neck, sliding just the right side of a razor over and under his skin. The sensation makes Eddie think of teeth, of Venom’s teeth, and of flesh blooming pink from pressure but not pain. Venom must miss the dip of curiosity in Eddie's gut.   
  
**We are not bothering her! She misses us!** ****  
  
“She really doesn't.”   
  
**She does!** ****  
  
Eddie sighs, frustrated. In response, Venom's energy, rippling and fanged in Eddie’s brain, settles. Softens. A calm echoes through Eddie in a feeling he's come to realize is Venom flipping through him, reading memories and emotions that Eddie never examines too closely.

It's one of the many things Venom does that no one else has. Look at Eddie, peer underneath, and try to find everything - not just what Venom wants to see.  
  
**You're still sad about her.** ****  
  
It's not an inaccurate assessment, but it's not whole. Eddie takes another gulp of coffee. He doesn't want to breathe life into all the hurt that still throbs over Anne. Especially now, when old pain has been relaxed by new, thrilling aches.   
  
**We can get her back** , Venom insists. **We're going to get her back.** ****  
  
“We don't want to get her back,” Eddie pushes. He glances at the faces on the street, wondering if there are any bad intentions for Venom to devour.   
  
**Stop trying to distract us with heads!** ****  
****  
“You like being distracted with heads.”  
  
A couple passing by hear him. They giggle and give him a thumbs up. Eddie has the decency to flush, but he gives a thumbs up right back.   
  
**Why don't we want Anne back? We can get her. We're very charming, Eddie! And she misses us!**

“She doesn't.” 

**How do you know?**

  
“Because,” Eddie says, spine sinking under the pressure of articulation. He slumps in the chair. “She didn't miss me after 6 months, and we were engaged. Trust me. After everything we went through, she definitely doesn't miss us now.”

  
Once Eddie bleeds it, arterial spray of pity coating him inside out, he realizes it wasn't as hard to say as he thought it would be. It sounds as pathetic out loud as it has in his head when he's let himself think it. Venom knows his pathetic, though. Knows it on a molecular level and hasn't left Eddie without looking back.   
  
Suddenly, it's easier to admit what he's been trying to deny. “She left us. I mean. She left me. There wasn't - we didn't even talk about it. And I get. I did a shitty thing. I was - I was a loser. But she gave up on me because of it.”

Venom is silent. It slithers through Eddie’s self loathing, his guilt, curling around all of his ugly things and learning it with toothy curiosity. Eddie gives himself over.  
  
It's not as if he can't speak the pain, but he's always been more comfortable with running. Diving heart first into a story instead of examining how ready his heart is to jump into anything again.   
  
**We are still kind of a loser** , Venom eventually concludes.   
  
Eddie smiles, tired but soothed at the conviction of Venom's voice. “Yeah. But we won't leave each other because of it, right?”   
  
**No. Never.**    
  
The word never slip slides into forever, and Eddie’s lungs flutter easier. Lighter. It's so much better to breathe around forever.   
  
“Anne's happy. She deserves it. She deserves better than me. And I've learned that. It's hard to accept but I do, now. She's better off with someone like Dan.”   
  
**Is she? You made her better. She helps people now. Like us.** ****  
  
“She did that by herself.”   
  
Eddie mostly believes that. Without the responsibility of making sure Eddie didn't fuck his life up looming over her head, she had time to look beyond money and reputation.   
  
Leaving Eddie made her better. Sure he pushed her - unintentionally, but he did. Maybe inspired her by always following the truth in the name of protecting the people he loved, which was nearly everyone, whose only weapons were education and exposure.   
  
But Eddie doubts he had as much influence as he'd like to believe he did. That he meant as much to Annie as he thought he did when he would take walks past her apartment.   
  
She loved him, he knows, and part of her may always beat with it. It was still easier for her to walk away than it should have been. Eddie doesn't blame her. He just sees, now. They were never the perfect match.   
  
**So we don't want her back?** ****  
  
Eddie shakes his head. “Nah. Anne and me - we’re good like we are now. We never really made each other stronger. Maybe she made me. More responsible. She made me take care of myself. But she couldn't lean on me. And I couldn't. With her I mean. It's not like with you.”   
  
Venom’s pride flares. **Not like with us. We are a perfect fit. Because we both sucked.**   
  
“Exactly. Anne and Dan have never sucked. They don't suck together. You and me though? We'll always suck together.”   
  
**Why didn't you say all this earlier? I have been making plans. I could have spent the time planning Annie's seduction on planning the best way to get more fingers to eat. I could have eaten so many more fingers.** ****  
  
Eddie laughs. “I'll get you more fingers.”   
  
Obviously he says this as the waiter steps out. Eddie blinks into his grey sky face, unmoved by Eddie's seemingly one sided, crazy conversation.   
  
“Sorry,” Eddie still mumbles.   
  
The waiter shrugs. “If you can't talk to yourself about weird shit, who you gonna talk to.” Eddie smiles into the offer of easy empathy. “More coffee?”   
  
“Please,” Eddie says. “And thanks.”   
  
“No problem. I mean, it might be, if we had many other customers. Just for future reference.”   
  
Eddie nods. When the guy turns his back, Eddie stashes all the cash in his wallet under the little vase of flowers on the table. He doesn't want to forget to tip if Venom yanks them away in a hurry.   
  
**So you're happy. With just us.** ****  
  
“Yeah. Of course, yeah.” A beat, and Eddie asks, “Is that why you wanted to get her back. To make me happy?”   
  
**Duh.**  
  
“Duh.”   
  
Venom ignores him, expanding. **It's better when you are happy, not sad. But you are too good at ignoring your sad, and absolute shit about fixing it. That is where I come in.** ****  
  
“It is,” Eddie agrees. “You make me happy.”   
  
**That is very sappy.** ****  
  
Eddie shrugs. Maybe it is. Maybe it's sentimental and simple and one of those internal truths Eddie ignores by pursuing greater external ones. Maybe it's why he couldn't say this to Venom, couldn't feel it at him, couldn't do more than try to distract Venom with anything other than his genuine sadness and joy.   
  
“Not any sappier than you deciding to protect an entire planet because you found a host as shitty as you.”   
  
**Guess not,** Venom agrees simply. **Fine. No Anne. We don't need her. We don't need anyone but each other.** ****  
  
“Well not no Anne at all. Anne as friend. We can do that. Just not anything more.”   
  
**Nothing more than us. No one.** ****  
  
And that's not exactly what Eddie meant. But staring into his coffee, buzzing with caffeine and a connection to this city he hasn't felt in years, Eddie doesn't really see the point of seeking more.   
  
He helps people now more than ever. Alone, he was the person who exposed wounds and offered band aids of twenty dollar bills and short conversation. Now, with Venom, he can expose the problems, then devour them. He can really protect people. And no one else is going to understand that, understand him, better than the alien under his skin.   
  
There's nothing else he needs. He feels full, and whole, like the worn out places inside of him have been patched with meaning and purpose and tendrils of alien understanding. This, more than anything Eddie has ever known, is being alive. This is love.   
  
**Pussy** , Venom says, endeared, and Eddie knows without a single vicious doubt that Venom feels the same. That they are one.   
  
“Parasite,” Eddie responds, just as fondly.   
  
**You know I don't like that word!** ****  
  
“I know. Why don't I make it up to you?”   
  
**How?** ****  
****  
Venom asks in time with another couple passing them. A man has his hand wrapped tight around a woman's elbow, fingers digging into flesh and fear. She won't meet Eddie's eyes. The guy does. He glares and tightens his grip.  
  
Eddie waits for them to pull ahead enough that they won't see him follow.   
  
“You said you wanted fingers, right?”   
  
**Yes! The breakfast of champions! And we are the champion!** ****  
  
“Well then,” Eddie says, standing. “Let's get us some fingers.”

**Author's Note:**

> it's so much better by britney spears is the symbrock song y'all.


End file.
